Chretien Henri Paul Suchier, Huguenot pastor in Karlshafen and Schwabendorf, about 1775; his daughter Marie Christine married Georges Henri Keppel.
A view of buildings along the Weser River in Karlshafen.
Our earliest ancestor in this region of the world was French, Louis Gautro, a master clothier, born about 1678. His marriage to Anne Marie Althans took place about 1708 in old-town Kassel. Their daughter, Anne Catharine, was born in 1709.
Anne Catharine married Georges Henri Keppel, a secondary school director at the high school of Hersfeld. They had two sons, Georges Guillaume and Jean Balthazar. In 1757 Georges Guillaume, a clerk in the local court and public treasury, married Madeleine Cogen (also spelled Cojen), daughter of Daniel Cogen and Catharine Rouviere.
They had three children, the eldest of whom---Marie Madeleine, born in 1757---married Ulrich Wilhelm Jatho. In 1785 their only son, Georges Henri, married Marie Christine Suchier, the daughter of Chretien Henri Paul Suchier, a prominent local Huguenot minister in Karlshafen and Schwabendorf (pictured at right).
The Suchiers had fled massacres in France to settle along the Weser River near Gewissenruh. In addition to Pastor Suchier, their line led to a well-known winemaker, Ferdinand Suchier, and a prominent philologist, Hermann Suchier.
Back to the Jatho connection: Ulrich Jatho was a secretary to the fire insurance commission in Kassel. He had four sons with Marie Madeleine. One of them was Georg Heinrich, born about 1790 and named in honor of his maternal grandfather Georges Henry. Marie Madeleine died in 1795, only 38 years old.
Ulrich Jatho's second marriage was to Anna Martha Degen, with whom he had six more children. One of their sons, Adolph, was to play an important part in our history. To read the continuing tales of All Our Jathos, please click the Jatho in Dransfeld page.